The explosion at the jailhouse had awakened the entire valley.
Sirens wailed—mechanical screams powered by steam. Searchlights swept the muddy streets, cutting through the smog.
Silas Vane emerged from a storm drain half a mile away, near the Rail-Yard.
He was covered in black soot, grave dirt, and sewer slime. To anyone else, he looked like a monster. To Silas, he just felt like he was back at work.
He crouched behind a pile of rusted railway ties.
Ahead of him sat the Iron-Eater.
It was a locomotive of colossal proportions. Its engine block was encased in black iron, shaped like the skull of a bull. Green fire spilled from its smokestack.
It didn't run on coal. It ran on Refined Tar. You could hear the fuel sloshing in the tender, heavy and viscous.
"That's my ride," Silas whispered.
The train gave a lurch.
HISSSSS.
Steam blasted from the pistons. The wheels, taller than a man, began to turn.
Silas sprinted.
He didn't run with the speed of a sprinter, but with the relentless, tireless pace of a predator.
He reached the rear car as it picked up speed. He grabbed the iron ladder.
His shovel clanged against the metal.
He pulled himself up.
[The Cargo]
Silas slipped inside the rear boxcar just as the train cleared the station limits.
It was pitch black inside.
He waited for his eyes to adjust, or rather, for his Spirit Vision to take over.
The world turned into grayscale outlines.
The car wasn't carrying coal. It wasn't carrying supplies.
It was stacked floor to ceiling with crates. But they were long, hexagonal crates.
Coffins.
Hundreds of them.
And they weren't empty.
Silas could feel the cold radiating from them. But it wasn't the quiet cold of the dead. It was the buzzing, static cold of the Undead.
Specimens, Silas realized, running his hand over a crate marked with the Sheriff's seal. Failed experiments. Or maybe successful ones.
He sat down on a crate labeled "Subject 89: Volatile."
He took a deep breath. The proximity to so much death was strangely soothing to his spirit. His Sequence 9 potion settled in his stomach, purring like a fed cat.
I should sleep, he thought. Regain strength.
CLANG.
A footstep landed on the roof of the car.
Silas froze.
It was soft, but heavy. Metal on metal.
Someone else was riding the Ghost Train.
[The Rooftop]
Silas climbed the ladder to the roof of the boxcar.
The wind was howling, whipping his coat around him. The train was crossing a massive trestle bridge over a ravine. Below, the darkness was absolute.
Standing at the other end of the car, silhouetted against the green smoke of the engine, was a figure.
A woman.
She wore a long duster coat and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low.
She was shuffling a deck of cards. The sound—fhwip-fhwip-fhwip—cut through the roar of the wind.
She stopped shuffling. She didn't turn around.
"You're heavy on your feet for a dead man," she shouted over the wind.
Silas gripped his shovel. "And you're loud for a stowaway."
The woman turned.
Under the moonlight, Silas saw her face. Sharp features, a cynical smile, and eyes that seemed to be calculating odds in real-time.
But it was her left arm that drew the eye.
It wasn't flesh. It was brass and clockwork. Pistons hissed where her elbow should be. The fingers were delicate, articulated steel pincers.
A Beyonder.
And judging by the cards... The Gambler Pathway.
"I assume you're not the conductor," Silas said, stepping forward.
"I'm a concerned passenger," the woman smirked. She raised her mechanical hand. She was holding a single card: The Ace of Spades.
"You smell like the jailhouse fire. Did you start that?"
"I finished it."
"Pity," she flipped the card. "I had money on the Sheriff living another week."
[The Duel of Luck and Death]
She flicked her wrist.
The card flew.
It didn't flutter like paper. It spun like a circular saw blade, glowing with a faint golden light.
Gambler Ability: Kinetic Deal.
Silas raised his shovel.
CLANG.
The card hit the iron blade with the force of a bullet. It sparked and embedded itself halfway into the metal.
If that had hit his throat, he would be decapitated.
"Rude," Silas muttered.
He charged.
He wasn't fast, but he was unstoppable. He ignored the wind. He ignored the swaying of the train.
The woman didn't move. She just smiled.
"Bad odds, darling. You're going to slip."
Gambler Ability: Minor Jinx.
Silas took a step. His boot hit a patch of oil on the roof.
He slipped.
Most men would have fallen off the train.
Silas didn't fight the fall. He went limp (Corpse Reflex). He slid under her guard, using the momentum to swing the shovel at her legs.
She gasped, surprised by his recovery. She jumped, her mechanical arm whirring as she grabbed a ventilation pipe to hoist herself up.
"You cheat!" she laughed, hanging from the pipe.
"I adapt," Silas stood up.
He didn't swing again. He unleashed his Aura.
Ability: Dread.
He projected the feeling of the grave directly at her.
The woman froze. For a second, she didn't see a man in a coat. She saw a yawning abyss waiting to swallow her. Her luck couldn't calculate a way out of death.
She dropped from the pipe, landing hard on the roof.
Silas placed the edge of his shovel against her throat.
"Give me a reason not to bury you here," Silas said coldly.
[The Truce]
The woman looked at the shovel, then up at his dead, grey eyes.
She slowly raised her hands. Her mechanical fingers clicked.
"Reason one: I'm the only one who knows where this train is actually going."
She grinned, despite the blade at her neck.
"Reason two: If you kill me, you'll never open the safe in the front car. And that's where the Golden Ticket is."
Silas paused. "Golden Ticket?"
"Metaphorically speaking," she tapped the shovel blade. "Real name's Cassidy Thorne. I'm a thief. A very unlucky one, apparently."
Silas lowered the shovel. He sensed no deception—or rather, her aura was too chaotic to read clearly.
"Silas Vane. Undertaker."
Cassidy dusted off her coat. She looked at the card embedded in his shovel.
"Nice swing, Vane. You owe me a new deck."
She pointed toward the front of the train.
"Look, the Sheriff isn't just shipping bodies. He's shipping Sequence Ingredients. There's a lockbox in the conductor's cabin carrying a Sequence 8 Characteristic. A 'Gravekeeper' heart, I hear."
Silas felt a pulse of hunger in his gut.
Sequence 8. The next step.
He looked at Cassidy.
"You want the money?"
"I want the artifacts," Cassidy shrugged. "You can eat the heart or whatever you creepy necro-types do. Do we have a deal?"
Silas looked at the dark horizon rushing past them.
He was a fugitive. He was hungry. And he was riding a train full of monsters.
"Deal," Silas said. "But if you throw another card at me, I'm putting you in a box."
Cassidy laughed. "I like you, Dead Man. You're bad for my health."
They turned toward the front of the train.
The locomotive screamed into the night, carrying two thieves, a thousand corpses, and a destiny that was about to derail.